Hungarian Grammar for Beginners

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When it comes to putting words together, you can observe that the various nations think differently about certain aspects of an object or an action. For a Hungarian one feature is more important than it is for other nations, and the opposite of it is also true.

Note that the first member of a Hungarian compound-word is sometimes turned into an adjective, which is not always the case in English.

Hungarian Word – English Equivalent > Literal Translation

kézfej – back of the hand > kéz+fej = hand+head

lábfej – foot >láb+fej = foot+head

szemüveg – a pair of glasses > szem+üveg = eye+glass

tollbamondás – dictation > tollba+mondás = into pen+saying

ékszer – jewel > ék+szer = ornament/decoration+tool

mosószer – detergent > mosó+szer=washing+chemical

gyógyszer – medicine > gyógy+szer = curing+chemical

rendőr – police officer > rend+őr = order+guard

tűzoltó – fireman > tűz+oltó = fire+extinguisher
>>this word can mean the fireman and the tool to put out the fire with

Segíteni szeretnék mindenkinek, ha lehetséges: zsidónak, nem zsidónak, feketének, fehérnek.
>the verb segít requires the suffix -n or -nak, -nek unlike in English. When listing Jew, Gentile, etc., you can make them plural or leave them in singular form, but keep it consistent. You can also say zsidóknak, nemeseknek, feketéknek, fehéreknek. In this case, the singular form is more powerful as it clearly refers to people as a whole.

7. In this world there is room for everyone and the good earth is rich and can provide for everyone.

In this world – A világon
there is room for – jut hely…-nak, -nek
everyone – mindenki
and – és
the good earth – a jó Föld, a jóságos Föld
is rich – gazdag
can – -hat, -het; képes; tud
provide for – gondoskodik …-ról, -ről
everyone – mindenki

A világon mindenkinek jut hely és a jó Föld gazdag, gondoskodik mindenkiről.
>There is no need to say Ezen a világon because we know that we live on this planet. It is enough to say A világon. It is not necessary that we translate the modal verb can. It sounds more powerful without -hat, -het. It is my opinion. It is a matter of what the translator thinks is the better solution.

8. The way of life can be free and beautiful, but we have lost the way.

The way of like – Az életünk, az életmódunk
can be – lehet
free – szabad
beautiful – gyönyörű
but – de
to lose the way – eltéved; eltévelyedik; rossz irányba megy

Az életünk szabad és gyönyörű lehet, de rossz irányba megyünk.

9. Greed has poisoned men’s souls; has barricaded the world with hate; has goose-stepped us into misery and bloodshed.

Növeltük a sebességet, mégis bezárkóztunk; a gépek, melyek bőséget szolgáltatnak nélkülözésbe taszítottak minket.
>It sounds much better to write növeltük a sebességet-we have increased than kifejlesztettük-we have developed. Machinery is better translated as gépek, than gépezet because it expresses that mankind is already using machines everywhere. The verb to give-ad sounds better if we say szolgáltat + -t = to provide with. The verb to leave-hagy is weak in Hungarian in this context, so it is not incorrect to translate it as taszít-to push.

11. Our knowledge has made us cynical; our cleverness, hard and unkind.

A gépek helyett inkább emberség kell. Az okosság helyett inkább kedvesség és gyengédség.
>If we simply say kell for to need, it is more powerful in this case.

14. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

Without – nélkül
these – ezek; ezen
quality – tulajdonság
life – élet
will be – lesz; válik valamivé
violent – erőszakos
all – minden
will be lost – elveszik

Ezen tulajdonságok nélkül az élet erőszakossá válik és minden elvész.
>The demonstrative pronoun ez is ezek in plural form. In this case, we should repeat it like ezek nélkül a tulajdonságok nélkül. To avoid that and make the translation more elevated, we can use a more elegant form ezen, so we do not need to repeat it: ezen tulajdonságok nélkül.

Ezen találmányok természetüknél fogva az emberben lévő jóságért kiált, egyetemes testvériségért, mindannyiunk egységéért.
> We do not need to repeat cries out for-kiált…-ért. It gives more kick if we do not repeat it.

17. Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing men, women, and little children, victims of a system that makes men torture and imprison innocent people.

so long as – amíg
to die – meghal
liberty – szabadság
never – soha
to perish – elpusztul

És amíg az emberek meghalnak, a szabadság soha nem pusztul el.

22. Soldiers! Don’t give yourselves to brutes, men who despise you and enslave you; who regiment your lives, tell you what to do, what to think and what to feel. Who drill you, diet you, treat you like cattle, use you as cannon fodder.

Nektek, az embereknek, van hatalmatok, hogy az életet szabaddá és gyönyörűvé tegyétek; hogy az életet csodálatos kalandként éljétek.
>I translated to make this life a wonderful adventure as to live life like it is a wonderful adventure. Sounds better in Hungarian.

31. Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power.
Then – akkor; in this case: hát

in the name of – -nak, -nek a nevében
democracy – demokárcia
let us – USUALLY TRANSLATED AS IMPERATIVE MOOD
to use – használ; él valamivel
that – azt a

Éljünk hát azzal a hatalommal a demokrácia nevében.

32. Let us all unite.

to unite – egyesül

Egyesüljünk!

33. Let us fight for a new world, a decent world that will give men a chance to work, that will give youth a future and old age a security.

The first solution can have the same meaning or it can shade the original meaning. In case of magyar-megyer it is the same meaning. Our ancestors used megyer just as magyar.

The second solution implies that consonants can be turned into other consonants. For example the M at the end of a word often changes into NG, ND, N to shade the meaning of that word. Or in case of kör-gurul the words express the same kind of thing, that is a circular motion and K often mutates into G.

I’d like to talk about the third solution in details because the inversion of the root can have the same meaning, it can shade the meaning or it can express the opposite of the base root. Look at this example: CsaVar – FaCSar. What happened in csavar? The root Cs_V was reversed and the V mutated into F, which is also very common. As a result, the two verbs have the opposite meaning. Csavar means to twist, facsar means to wring. The first implies – fundamentally – a motion inwards, the second a motion outwards.

Another example can be megy (to go) – jön (to come). Would you tell about these verbs that they are inversions? This is how it goes: MeGY <> GYeM > GYeN > GYüN > JöN.

So what is it about MaG<> GaM? They imply the same thing: something spherical that has a seed in it or it has the shape of a seed. The vowels and the consonants can change to shade the meaning. The root GaM has no meaning today, but its derivatives do. I’ll keep writing the consonants carrying the meaning in capital letters, so that you see the root better.

We had a word like KiJó. Nowadays we say KíGYó (snake). The inversion of KíGY is GYíK. GYíK means lizard. Animals belonging to the same kind of species, so to say. With consonant mutation GYíK became CSíK (streak, stripe). Obviously lizards and snakes look like a streak from the distance.

Other examples would never really ”show themselves” if we wouldn’t know their origins. Such roots are: ék, kő, üt, tű. Kő (stone) is the inversion of éK (wedge). It is obvious that a stone, especially a sharp one resembles a wedge. With a wedge you can hit things, and so some consonant and vowel mutations will allow us to create the verb üT (hit). The inversion of üt is Tű (needle). And a needle still looks like a small wedge. Out of the root éK, our eKe(plough) was born.

Another phenomenon is when the consonant H modifies the original root. Such root is aL (below, beneath). If you put an h at the beginning of the word, it becomes HaL (fish). Where do fish live? Under the ocean.

A HaL aLul van. – The fish is beneath.

The poetic way of thinking of our ancestors allowed them to identify fish with death:

What does a person do who died? If someone dies at sea, you say: That man perished at sea = Az az ember tengerbe HALT. And what does a dead person do? He’s silent like a fish, that is HaLLgat. This is how these words developed: aL (beneath) > HaL (fish-to die) > HaLott (dead) > HaLLgat (to be silent, to listen). Also, if someone’s listening to you while you’re speaking, they’re silent.

Hungarian has a word root system that has been known for centuries, but for political reasons certain people made sure that the Hungarian people had never really known about it up until now. In the recent years we’ve rediscovered this fundamental aspect of our language.

Linguists say that languages change quickly. That’s only true for young languages like those belonging to the Indo-European branch. Because the story of the settlement of the Magyars in Hungary (Honfoglalás) is a big fat lie and we’ve always known that, some Hungarian linguists and archeologists didn’t rest to prove it wrong. We’ve found houses made of stone in Hungary buried under a considerable amount of soil. Interestingly enough, those houses are 7500 years old. Meaning Hungarians have always lived in the Carpathian Basin and certain groups had migrated to other territories, but the ‘dyed-in-the-wool’ population stayed in Hungary. Forget the Finno-Ugric lie. Nobody capable of critical thinking believes that today.

Nowadays we can clearly prove the Scythian-Hun-Avar-Hungarian continuity. Bad luck for those trying to suppress our history for a thousands years now.

The Hungarian language is the evidence for the fact that we’ve always lived where we live now. To be more precise, its root system is the evidence. Such a complex language can only develope in a closed land protected from foreigners for thousands of years and more.

Honestly, I don’t know if this knowledge helps you understand Hungarian better or confuses you more, but I’ll give it a try.

Our ancestors didn’t write or say anything in vain. The word roots are built up with a vowel + consonant or a consontant + vowel + consonant combination. (VC or CVC)

These roots have their own meaning and the ones that lost their meaning by now (but had it long ago) are shaded with suffixes to create new meanings in the same category the word roots were originally intented to express.

Roots that kept their meaning in themselves are like ég (sky), tér (space)…

The fundamental meaning of the word is expressed by the consonants, the vowels refer to distance, space, earth-bound or celestial quality. Therefore linguists capitalize the consonants: KeR, éG, TéR…

For example the a-e, á-é word pairs are extremely common. Take a look at this:

tér (space) – tár (to open wide)
>TéR has an é because the sky and the earth is one big space. TáR has an á because you open something wide on the ground.

ég (sky) – ág (branch)

>éG has an é because it refers to the sky itself, áG has an á because it’s on the ground attached to a tree and the branch reaches towards the sky.

It’s clear that we can’t talk about German, French and Slavic loan-words. Our word root system proves that 95% of our words belong to the original Hungarian vocabulary. Foreigners and especially the Vatican want to make us believe that Hungarians were a herd of uneducated people and when (Judeo) Christians arrived and spred their love with iron and fire, suddenly we formed a civilized nation. Apparently the Vatican has really smart people. Hungarians have always been Christians, only Christianity was a positive thing with no blood-shed unlike that blood-thirsty Bible with crucifictions, inquisitions and holy wars. What is so holy about any war? I’m having trouble understanding that part.

Our Hungarian alphabet (runic alphabet if you will) also proves that ordinary people in the ancient Hungary could write and read just our priests, while in the highly developed west only priests could write and the ordinary people were illiterate.

A simple archaeological find proves that our ancestors talked pretty much like we do now 3000 years ago. On a piece of stone, among other words, somebody wrote gyümölcs (fruit) with the Hungarian alphabet. He wrote it with ü and ö just like as we pronounce it now. 3000 years ago! If you read a text from 400 years ago, say, something from Bálint Balassi, there is no need to change one letter in it because it sounds like we speak today. Try to do that with a text from Shakespear. Give it to some English students and ask them if they can understand it without explanation.

Unfortunately, Christians had burnt everything they found, so there’s very little left above the ground. Under the ground archaeologists have found a good number of artifacts with our original Hungarian alphabet. Today a considerable number of Hungarians have rediscovered it (including me) and at least we use it to keep it alive.

The other interesting feature of the Hungarian language that it thinks in images. The word spoken evokes the image of what we talk about. It also heavily relies on dual meanings. Just an example:

ég (sky) – ég (to burn)

What’s the connection between the ég noun and the ég verb? Our ancestors saw that a big fiery ball was up there and it seemed to behave like fire – it burned. And it’s still burning today. So what’s up there? It’s the sky (ég) where the sun burns (ég).

A Nap az égen ég. – The sun burns in the sky.

Other example:

láng (flame) – leng (to swing, to wave)

What does the flame do? It swings, waves as it’s blown by the wind.

A láng leng. – The flame is swinging.

Another aspect of our word roots is the reversal of the root (szófordítás). Our ancestors made up the word mag (seed). They shaded its meaning with different vowels and consonants:

mag – seed > meggy (sour cherry)…

Then they reversed the word root to shade its meaning even further or to reverse the meaning. In this case mag became: MaG <> GaM (no meaning today)>GoM (no meaning today) > GoMb (button) > GoMba (mushroom)> GYüMölcs (fruit). These words refer to an object that has a seed or it reminds us of the shape of a seed.

So much for one breath. If you’re interested in more, here are some links for you:

’Nowadays any self-respecting Hollywood star is wearing clothes, shoes, bags, jackets exclusively made of plastic or is posing in the buff for a campaign serving the protection of animal rights. Lately, only those can afford real fur who were born in it. Or not?’

The literal translation is:
Nowadays on herself something giving Hollywood star exclusively of plastic made clothes, shoes, bags, jackets is wearing, or naked as born by her mother is posing in the protection of animal rights serving campaign. Real fur lately only those can afford who in it came into the world. Or not?

’In the quite favourable international mood of investment and fired up by the hope of Hungarian EU/IMF agreement expected in two month, this week forint continued getting stronger significantly even apart from the fact that, unexpectedly, the Hungarian National Bank did not raise interest presumably due to the opposition of the new monetary council members.’

The literal translation is:
The forint in the quite favourable international investment mood, and by the hope of the in two month to be exptected Hungarian EU/IMF agreement fired up this week significantly further got stronger even apart from the fact that the Hungarian National Bank unexpectedly did not raise interest probably due to the opposition of the new monetary council members.

>tanácstag (council member) + -ok (nominative plural ending) = tanácstagok = council members
ellenkezés = opposition; disagreement
miatt = due to, because of
> az új tanácstagok ellenkezése miatt = due to the opposition of the new council members